The two teen stars of late Italian
director Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet are suing
Paramount Pictures saying they were the victims of underage
sexual exploitation because of love scenes in the 1968 hit film.
Olivia Hussey and Leonard Withing, respectively 15 and 16 when
the director shot the scenes, are now both grandparents in their
70s.
They are seeking damages of half a billion dollars.
The Shakespeare play adaptation was one of the biggest
successes in the career of Zeffirelli, who died in 2019 aged 96.
Hussey and Wilding won Golden Globes for their performances as
the star-crossed lovers.
The pair, whose careers never really took off after this early
success, maintain that Zeffirelli had promised them there would
be no nude scenes in the film, and they would be wearing
flesh-coloured body suits in the bedroom scene.
They say that when the time came to shoot the scene, the
director begged them to do it nude saying that otherwise "the
film would have been a fiasco".
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